[EARLY WOMAN PRINTER ~ 1747]. Satirarum libri quinque. [Bound as issued with]: Aulus Persius Flaccus
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- SIGNED
- Paris: Widow De la Tour for Auguste Grange, 1747
Paris: Widow De la Tour for Auguste Grange, 1747. Very good. 12mo (150 x 90 mm). lxviii, 224 pp., illustrated with engraved title-page vignettes, culs-de-lampe, and head- and tailpiece vignettes throughout. Fine 18th-century French blue morocco, smooth spine gilt in six compartments, red morocco lettering piece (repaired?) in the second compartment, edges stained yellow (top edge dust soiled), pink watered silk pastedowns and endpapers. Very attractive copy. PRINTED ON FINE PAPER BY MARIE-ANNE (MERIGOT) DELATOUR WHOSE TYPOGRAPHICAL WORK EXCEEDED ALMOST ALL OF HER PARISIAN CONTEMPORARIES. OUR COPY WAS BOUND IN BLUE MOROCCO AND IS BEAUTIFULLY PRESERVED.
Marie-Anne was not born into the business of books and printing per se (her father was a butcher) but her brother was the well known bookseller Francois-Gabriel Merigot. She married the printer-bookseller Louis-Denis Delatour, and upon his death in 1734 (or 1735?) she inherited his presses, the operations of which she continued with great success for the next thirty years. According to a 1744 report, her printing house had 5 presses and employed 9 workers; by 1752 she had apparently made herself "fort riche." She sold her printing operation in 1765 but continued as a bookseller for at least one year; she died on July 5, 1767. She had a least two children, a daughter, Marie who became the first wife of printer-bookseller Pierre-Guillaume Simon, and Louis-Francois Delatour who became a printer-bookseller like his mother and father.
Noticed here apparently for the first time is that two issues of this edition exist, one with and one without a frontispiece. A very cursory search produces records of four copies into which a frontispiece was never bound, including ours which was printed on fine paper (and very finely bound at the time of publication).
PROVENANCE: From the library of Edwin Wolf II, great American bibliographer and former CEO and Librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia, with his EW2 mark in ink on the front flyleaf.
Arbour, Dictionnaire des femmes libraires en France 1470-1870, p. 178.
Marie-Anne was not born into the business of books and printing per se (her father was a butcher) but her brother was the well known bookseller Francois-Gabriel Merigot. She married the printer-bookseller Louis-Denis Delatour, and upon his death in 1734 (or 1735?) she inherited his presses, the operations of which she continued with great success for the next thirty years. According to a 1744 report, her printing house had 5 presses and employed 9 workers; by 1752 she had apparently made herself "fort riche." She sold her printing operation in 1765 but continued as a bookseller for at least one year; she died on July 5, 1767. She had a least two children, a daughter, Marie who became the first wife of printer-bookseller Pierre-Guillaume Simon, and Louis-Francois Delatour who became a printer-bookseller like his mother and father.
Noticed here apparently for the first time is that two issues of this edition exist, one with and one without a frontispiece. A very cursory search produces records of four copies into which a frontispiece was never bound, including ours which was printed on fine paper (and very finely bound at the time of publication).
PROVENANCE: From the library of Edwin Wolf II, great American bibliographer and former CEO and Librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia, with his EW2 mark in ink on the front flyleaf.
Arbour, Dictionnaire des femmes libraires en France 1470-1870, p. 178.